FAQs

Roads in the Lismore LGA – and Northern Rivers more broadly – are largely built on weak, floodplain pug soils.

Combined with the high rainfall and ongoing floods, this results in a very weak foundation to build on that is often unstable, prone to movement and cracking, and has a low load-carrying capacity.

The Lismore LGA also has a very large road network with a comparatively small rate base and our roads are some of the oldest built in the Northern Rivers as this was one of the first areas settled.

Over the last 30 years, there has been huge population growth in the region, putting enormous pressure on roads that were never originally built to carry such high volumes of traffic.

Since the 1970s, our road network has been added and built onto in an ad hoc manner. Funding has never kept pace with the need to re-build roads to modern standards to service the growing number of people commuting to work and the increase in heavy vehicles using our roads for freight and transport.

Unfortunately, this combination of wet and weak soils, high traffic volumes and a lack of funding over many decades has created a difficult situation that has only got worse over time.

The problem is now so big that there is no quick fix. Council’s focus is on attracting more funding through state and federal government and ensuring that we use the funds we do have to get the best value for money.

There are many factors that have contributed to the current roads backlog, including:

• Roads were originally constructed for small numbers of traffic – the roads have never been able to keep up with the high rate of population growth in the last 50 years.
• Our road network has never received adequate funding to be improved and maintained.
• The cost of roadworks and labour is increasing and Council revenue is not keeping pace.

As well as the challenges of maintaining our road network, Council is also delivering more and more services to the community that were traditionally provided by the state government, putting further pressure on our budget.

Council has a roads backlog of around $70 million but Lismore is not unique in this situation. The problem of road funding shortfalls is common to all NSW councils. There is no extra funding available from other tiers of government to deal with this backlog, so it is up to individual councils to try and manage the problem.

We are regularly asked, ‘Why don’t you fix the worst roads first?’

It’s a good question.

We often use the painting of a weatherboard house as an analogy to explain our approach. If you don’t paint the house, the weather will cause the paint to peel, allowing the wood to rot. So, you paint regularly, to stop a bigger and more expensive problem developing.

It’s the same principle for fixing roads. Five years ago, Council adopted a new approach to fixing roads recommended by experts as a way to improve our whole road network over time. As part of this approach, we resurface roads still in good condition to keep them waterproof and protect the expensive gravel foundation underneath from becoming wet and weak.

This gets the most life out of every road and represents better value for money. However, one of the consequences of this change is that some roads in very poor condition take longer to be rebuilt. Allocating more money to resurfacing to keep the good roads from failing means we have less money to fully reconstruct roads that are in very poor condition.

To measure improvements, we assessed the condition of our roads in 2015 and applied the same methodology in 2020 to capture real data and measure our performance.

This data has shown a marked improvement in the condition of our road network since we implemented this new approach to fixing roads.

In simple terms, because we have resurfaced 32% of our sealed road network over the last five years, it has improved the surface condition assessment significantly. The percentage of the network in 'poor' condition has reduced from 68% to 16%. Conversely, the percentage of the network that is in 'average' or 'fair' condition has improved from 32% to 84%.

This is great news and shows that our new approach is working. Over time, this will continue to improve the whole road network and keep more of our expensive gravel foundations in good repair, costing us less in the long run.

Fixing a road ‘from scratch’ is called ‘reconstruction’ and is very costly. Last year, we only reconstructed about 3km of road. However, we resurfaced around 60km of sealed roads. Resurfacing is done on roads that are still in a fair condition and keeps the top bitumen layer in good repair to protect the expensive gravel foundation.

All roads in poor condition (i.e. roads that need fixing from scratch) are on a priority list for reconstruction, but it can take years for funding to become available to fix these roads.

We still need to ensure our roads can get people to and from home and work safely, so we undertake pothole patching to keep the road driveable until such time as we can afford to reconstruct the road.

This is rare, but it can happen on occasion.

It is very unfortunate, but road building is not an exact science and there are many variables that our engineers and road crews contend with.

It’s important to remember we are building on natural surfaces and using natural materials. No matter how well we plan, sometimes we encounter unexpected or unforeseen issues.

There are several reasons why a pothole can occur on a newly reconstructed or resurfaced road. The most common two reasons are:

1. The roadwork has disturbed a sub-soil spring that only begins to release water after the road has been completed. If water bubbles up from this spring under the road surface, the wet foundation then cracks and potholes form. In these instances, Council has to plug the spring with a mix of lime/cement and gravel, then reseal the road.
   
   
2. The material used to fix the road was not completely consistent and there may be an isolated pocket of clay material in the mix. This can cause cracks to occur and allow water to get in, causing potholes. This happens occasionally as the material used for road building can be variable as it is a natural product. It comes from a local hillside – it is not 100% consistent like a lab-developed material such as plastic. In these instances, Council has to dig up the foundation and add new roadbase, then reseal the road.

Gravel roads make up 420km of our road network, which is 1200km in total. They receive around 5% of the roads budget for ongoing grading, drain clearing and the addition of gravel.

Typically, gravel roads get a smaller percentage of funding because they often service fewer homes. Roads that service the greatest number of people are allocated the greatest proportion of funding, and these are usually sealed roads.

All gravel roads in the Lismore Local Government Area are graded as part of our ongoing gravel maintenance schedule.

Within the schedule, we group our gravel roads into three classifications – Class A, B and C – to determine how often we grade them.

The class of road is determined by how many people drive on that road. If it’s a major road with high traffic volumes and school bus routes for instance, then it would be a Class A road. If it’s an access road servicing only a few homes, it would be a Class C road.

Class A roads are graded twice a year, Class B roads once a year and Class C roads once every two years.

This is the most equitable way to allocate funding and ensure that the roads that service the greatest number of people receive the most funding.